Study of heavy-flavor quarks produced in association with top-quark pairs at s = 7 TeV using the ATLAS detector
Using a sample of dilepton top-quark pair (t$\bar{t}$) candidate events, a study is performed of the production of top-quark pairs together with heavy-flavor (HF) quarks, the sum of t$\bar{t}$+b+X and t$\bar{t}$+c+X, collectively referred to as t$\bar{t}$+HF. The data set used corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 4.7 fb -1 of proton-proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 7 TeV recorded by the ATLAS detector at the CERN Large Hadron Collider. The presence of additional HF (b or c) quarks in the t$\bar{t}$ sample is inferred by looking for events with at least three b-tagged jets, where two are attributed to the b quarks from the t$\bar{t}$decays and the third to additional HF production. The dominant background to t$\bar{t}$+HF in this sample is t$\bar{t}$+jet events in which a light-flavor jet is misidentified as a heavy-flavor jet. To determine the heavy- and light-flavor content of the additional b -tagged jets, a fit to the vertex mass distribution of b -tagged jets in the sample is performed. The result of the fit shows that 79±14(stat)±22(syst) of the 105 selected extra b -tagged jets originate from HF quarks, 3 standard deviations away from the hypothesis of zero t$\bar{t}$+HF production. The result for extra HF production is quoted as a ratio (R HF ) of the cross section for t$\bar{t}$+HF production to the cross section for t$\bar{t}$ production with at least one additional jet. Both cross sections are measured in a fiducial kinematic region within the ATLAS acceptance. R HF is measured to be [6.2±1.1(stat)±1.8(syst)]% for jets with p T >25GeV and |η|<2.5, in agreement with the expectations from Monte Carlo generators.